Porsche Memories
In 1983 and 1984, Alan Giddins supported the entry of two 911s into the Bahrain International Rally. In 1983, the car was a private entry and in 1984, it was one of only twenty 911 SC RS's ever produced. That car is now in a garage somewhere in America but what follows is an excerpt from Alan’s autobiography ‘Porsche Memories’.
The Bahrain International Rally
In 1983, I had been thinking for some time about Porsche in competition and how we could do something in the Middle East to promote Porsche in our region and use some of Porsche’s established name in motor sport.
At that point there was hardly any recognised motor sport other than national clubs across the region and although small, our own Bahrain Motor Club was one. However rallying had been well established for the past several years and had recently gained FIA backing for a Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) and Rothmans/Opel were the current Champions.
That year 1983, one of our customers, Joseph (Joe) Moussa, came to us and asked us if we could prepare his road Porsche 911 Coupe for entry into the Bahrain International Rally.
We told Joe it would cost a small fortune to do the preparation properly. We had some experience in motor sport and knew what it takes to compete even at a basic level, let alone an International event. Joe informed us that he knew the route of the rally very well and all he needed was the basic equipment added to his road car to make it FIA legal.
We discussed this on several occasions and I forced the matter through our next Board Meeting on the basis that if Joe wanted us to do this as our customer and he was paying for it, then we should agree to his request. Everyone agreed and we told Joe we would support him as a customer but not as Porsche Bahrain. We organised a full roll cage, full-length aluminium under shield, rally seats and full harness seat belts, fire extinguisher, electric cut off switch, additional rims and rally tyres, etc. We stripped all the basic trim out of Joe’s 911 to lighten it as much as possible and within a couple of weeks had the car prepared. We were all concerned about the suspension as this was always the weakest link in previous Rally Porsche 911 cars. However, Joe said this was a step too much for his finances so we settled on fitting 930 turbo Bilstein dampers as a basic compromise.
The Rally soon came around and we were all out in force supporting Joe during his practice sessions until the day of the actual event. We had decided that we would portray Performance Cars Bahrain support as strictly one of supporting our customer, pointing at every occasion; this was a private entrant by one of our customers who had asked for our service support.
The Bahrain International Rally was known to be extremely rugged on a number of special stages, and his chance of finishing with regular road suspension was highly unlikely. The main challenge the Porsche 911 had was that whilst the suspension could easily be raised the travel on the dampers was limited and every time the car jumped over rough terrain, it pulled on the bottom of the dampers and eventually these would just break under the stress. We all remembered the Porsche Factory 911 Safari cars had steel wires fitted front & rear to stop this but Joe’s car had no such luxury. Another problem was the rear trailing arms where they were bolted on to the torsion spring plates, had a tendency to stretch the bolts and work loose. Other issues of concern were the engine mountings and brackets, which on a rally car were always strengthened.
Joe ran very well for about two thirds of the event, but then the rear dampers fell completely to pieces a second time and he had to retire as we did not have time to retrieve him and replace these. Everyone was happy, including Joe, so all was not lost. The important thing that we learned was that for a number of stages, Joe was very competitive in what was basically a road Porsche 911 with only 205bhp and no rally suspension.
Jimmy McRae and John Spiller won the rally in a Rothmans Opel and we had supported David Richards in Bahrain as best as we could.
Run up to the 1984 Middle East Rally Championship
In the summer of 1983, Herbert Layder who was our contact with Porsche AG, Ludwigsburg in those days, mentioned that Porsche was planning to build 20 new 911 SC RS cars to homologate as rally cars. Because of our earlier rally effort with Joe Moussa, Herbert told me to contact Jürgen Barth if we were interested in buying a car and I subsequently called Jürgen to find out what his plans were.
Jürgen Barth was and is extremely well known in the competition world of Porsche and he was based in Weissach, the Porsche Research & Development Centre, where he was running this as one of his projects. He sent me some information on the Porsche 911 SC RS, which was known internally as Type 954.
I always thought the Porsche 911 would make an excellent rally car for us to enter into the Middle East Rally Championship, so this announcement for a special 911 SC RS for the following year, 1984, seemed perfect.
Now Porsche had opened the door to the possibility of us entering a proper rally car by announcing the Porsche 911 SC RS. The 911 SC RS engine was an evolution of the SC 3.0. The K-Jetronic mechanical injection was replaced by a six pistons Kugelfisher pump. The compression ratio was raised from 9.8:1 to 10.3:1 with new forged pistons.
New overhead camshafts and valve settings ensure a higher rev limit. As a result, the engine type 930/18 developed 255 bhp @ 6,500 rpm with the street legal exhaust system. The oil cooler of the 911 SC RS, positioned in the front right wing, was enlarged and placed in the front spoiler. The gearbox type 915 also received an additional oil cooler (as on the Carrera 3.2) to support the increased torque developed by the engine.
Our Porsche 911 SC RS, chassis number WPOZZZ91ES110019 (number 19 of the 20 cars being produced) arrived in Bahrain and we set to work on preparing it for the seasons rallying. Once it was finally in the workshops, we all poured over it to finally inspect this limited edition Porsche 911SC RS special. We had pre-ordered and imported all the special competition parts from Jürgen Barth at Porsche Weissach, supplied to us as bespoke rally competition parts for this car.
The car was street legal so we needed to remove all the items that were either not necessary, such as the Webasto petrol heater, which was located in the steering rack well, as the engine had an RS exhaust manifolds, so there were no heat exchangers like a road car. This was an old Porsche idea from the 1950’s that actually burnt petrol from the fuel tank to heat the air to warm the car’s interior. The full roll cage needed fitting, which was in lightweight aluminium alloy. The road going seat belts removed and replaced with 6 point Luke racing ones.
The aluminium under shield was for the entire length of the car, which was in several pieces so it could be shipped easier. The handbrake was changed to a “fly off” type, that is when you put it on, you hand to manually lock it as on, but when you lifted it and let it go, it automatically went to the off position. This allowed using the handbrake during the special stages without the fear of leaving it on accidently. The standard car came with dual master cylinder braking systems. A four light rally light cluster was fitted to the lower bonnet, which was detachable, so it was only used during the night or when required.
Middle East Rally Championship 1984
A couple of days before the second round held in Kuwait, we followed as the supporting team driving across the Bahrain-Saudi Causeway and then north up the highway through the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and into Kuwait.
An amazing thing to see as we drove north was a vast never-ending convoy of heavy military transport trucks on the road, mile after mile. These were the Western governments arming Saddam Hussein at the time against the Ayatollah’s Iranian regime, which was considered a real danger in the region.
The rally took place during the Iraq/Iran war and every night, the sky on the horizon rocked and was lit up and flashed with heavy gunfire, followed by the noise of the guns. It was all a bit unnerving at first, but we reassured ourselves as we were in another country albeit only a few miles away across the desert.
Across the Middle East Championship, the Bahrain event had a reputation as a car breaker unless you were careful and so we did quite a lot of testing and practice. Overall we had a lot of fun competing in the Middle East Rally Championship and we certainly did not disgrace ourselves on a very limited budget. We later restored the Porsche 911 SC RS, to road specifications and sold it on to an enthusiast in the USA.
Alan’s book Porsche Memories is available to purchase from Amazon.
